An absence of living history in the West and a lack of real debate in the Muslim world are central to the Islamic reaction to the Pope's speech, writes Patsy McGarry
The extent and sheer intensity of Muslim reaction to Pope Benedict's quoting a medieval emperor on the prophet Muhammad has been met in the West with a bewilderment almost equal - if opposite - to the Muslim furore.
It points to a deep chasm of understanding between the cultures of the West and the Middle East, particularly, where bewilderment and outrage seem more prevalent in both instances than any mutual respect.
It is clear Muslim sensibilities are acutely raw at the moment where western leaders and their utterances are concerned. In Muslim eyes, the West's deliberate tardiness in restraining the Israeli ravaging of Lebanon this summer was but the latest example of a contempt which many of them feel informs western attitudes to the Islamic world, its culture and religion.
Their history, they believe, is littered with such examples, going right back to the Crusades. And, just as we Irish harboured for so long every perceived blow inflicted on us by the "ould enemy" through a claimed 800 years of occupation, they too retain a living sense of every insult suffered at the hands of the West down the millenia.
On a visit to Iran in 2000 a young lecturer in Teheran told me in graphic detail about the barbaric savagery of the Crusaders.
He recalled chapter and verse of what he saw as the seamless treachery of British and American involvement in his country's affairs, instancing how in the early 1950s both western countries, in an attempt to get their hands on Iranian oil, deposed a democratically elected government and replaced it with a puppet Shah, whose corruption bred the 1979 Iranian revolution.
Indeed, in an act of wanton solidarity with me as an Irishman, he brought me to the British embassy compound in Tehran to show me "Bobby Sands Street", which ran alongside it. It was so named to annoy the British.
History is a living presence in the Muslim world and all its bloody miseries come to life with every new violation inflicted by the West. A West, let it be said, where there is little sense of history. It would not be difficult to believe that President Bush, for instance, belongs to the Henry Ford school where history is concerned.
Ford famously, in an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1916, said: "I don't know much about history, and I wouldn't give a nickel for all the history in the world. It means nothing to me. History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today."
History has been particularly "live" in the Muslin world since the 2004 US/British-led invasion of Iraq, the consequences of which may yet destabilise the entire region.
But the contempt with which Middle Eastern Muslims feel they have been treated by the West is just part of their sense of outrage. Many in Muslim countries simply do not understand a western culture where, for instance, little is sacred or there is little sense of the sacred, when it comes to freedom of expression. They, and many people in the East generally, simply do not "get" the western take on life.
They do not understand the western tradition of dialogue and debate, referred to by Pope Benedict in his talk last Tuesday. More particularly, they do not appreciate the western method of inquiry which employs argument and counter-argument as a means of arriving at truth. They also find the western tradition of scepticism impolite, at its mildest, and wholly alien, even repugnant, at its worst.
Muslims do not compartmentalise life as westerners do, placing the sacred in a side category. Generally speaking, for Muslims the sacred is a given. It is accepted and dominates their lives. It is venerated, not questioned and, most assuredly, it is not lampooned.
Indeed, where journalism itself is concerned, this can present difficulties. At an interfaith dialogue held in Larnaca, Cyprus, last July, a fascinating divergence of understanding emerged between what some Asian and western delegates, including reporters, had of the role of journalism.
There was, for example, the view of panellist Sanitsuda Ekachai, assistant editor at the Bangkok Post in Thailand. She spoke of the eastern emphasis on harmony, in journalism as elsewhere. She referred to the Buddha and suggested journalists be his partners and follow his maxim that "if it is true but not beneficial, do not say [ ie print] it. If it leads to the affliction of another, do not say it".
Her comments did not stray far from sentiments expressed to the conference by Chinese ambassador Xue Xian Wang at its opening session. He said: "Harmony is an essence of the Chinese cultural heritage nurtured by the 56 ethnic groups . . . Harmony has always been the cohesive force that keeps the big family of China together."
Western journalists present took issue. They said they believed in reason and the reasonable; that their philosophy and training was in scepticism, which was not cynicism; that their method was the question; that they were nobody's partners, not even the Buddha's; and that they were a separate estate whose independence they felt must be jealously guarded.
You might say the outcome of the seminar was a mutual incomprehension. East remained East and West remained West. The task for our times is to overcome that mutual incomprehension.
Patsy McGarry is Religious Affairs Correspondent